Various interfaces and methodologies are presently available for communicating between electronic devices such as chips and hardware boards. Some of these methods have been adopted as industry standards. These interfaces typically use additional signal lines or coding as a signaling method from one device to the next, which consume extra input/output connections and/or bandwidth in the data stream.
For example, in some methods, a particular bit stream is sent that indicates the start or end of a message or that delineates fields within a message. This consumes extra bandwidth. In some methods, a separate signal line carries a signal indicative of the start or end of a message. This consumes an input/output connection of the device.
Accordingly, there is a need for a signaling method that is capable of indicating the start and end of a message but that minimizes the amount of additional bandwidth and/or input/output connections that are necessary to implement the method.